


The Involuntary Appeal of Darkness

by beckdarkthrone



Series: The Beauty of the Dark Side [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: AU, Alcoholism, Angst, Ben Solo - Freeform, Dark Kylo Ren, Depression, Dont read this if youre expecting real ben and rey bc honestly its straying so far away i am sorry, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Han Solo - Freeform, Kylo Ren - Freeform, Original Character based off Rey, Rey - Freeform, Self Harm, Telepathy, Whump, art school au, its still good though, telepathic connection, tw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:40:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24960031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beckdarkthrone/pseuds/beckdarkthrone
Summary: An AU fic based loosely off the characters of Ben Solo and Rey.What happens when two people have an involuntary telepathic connection, and when one is hiding darkness within themselves?
Series: The Beauty of the Dark Side [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1806538





	1. The Involuntary Appeal of Darkness

I could already sense that he was in a feral mood again. We still had no explanation as to why the two of us were connected. I did not even believe in anything mildly psychic until one day, I was in a lecture on Ancient Roman Architecture, and I heard HIS thoughts in my head, as clear as my own. 

*

“Jesus fucking Christ if he looks at me one more fucking time…” a deep and strained sentence echoed through my head.  
I thought for a second that I was going crazy, until it happened again, only minutes later.  
“I wonder if it would be quicker to kill them or myself…” it said, in a mildly amused tone.  
I looked around the lecture theatre to see if there was any reason or explanation.  
If anyone looking at me. Then I saw someone down the front of the lecture hall, with a dark smirk on his face, glaring at the lecturer who once again just tried to grab his attention.  
“If it is you, look up” I thought directly at him, loudly and foolishly.  
Maybe the 3 nights of studying in a row had finally done I in? I was truly losing my mind. They always told us to work smart not hard, but it did not seem like a big deal at the time. I needed to get my essays done!  
Except he did look up, and searched around the lecture theatre. Looking more interested than confused – which I am sure was the emotion that I reflected on my face. His eyes continued to scan across the hall until he stopped, his eyes locked instantly with mine.  
Dark brown eyes, with dark circles underneath. His dark hair matched his dark outfit, a black oversized sweater, and black pants.

“… If you can hear me, nod…” I think quietly, secretly hoping he would not nod, surely this is insane. But he did. He nods.  
“I can hear you…. Can you hear me?” He responds, clearly and deeply, smirking again at my eyes widening in shock. I nod back in response.  
He chuckles quietly to himself, gaining some strange looks from other students around him, before he faces the front and continues to pay attention to the lecture, thinking of ways he could burn down the lecture theatre in order to escape the upcoming exam on The Concrete Revolution. 

*  
Wrapping myself up in an old sweatshirt and a blanket, I curl up on my windowsill, reading my old and battered copy of A Secret History. With a cup of tea in one hand and a packet of menthols in the other, I decide to enjoy what’s left of the daylight when I can feel the connection between our minds being solidified once again. I sigh.  
“I’m trying to relax Ben… I’d rather not do this… What’s going on?” I ask, agitated, even though I know I have no right to be. We don’t get to choose when the connection is made, it just happens, no matter what we are doing. But his mood seeps quietly into my consciousness, with anger and brutality filling my heart. 

“Yeah well, me too.” He sulks back sluggishly, but with an edge of sarcasm and amusement in his voice. Lately I have been catching him in moments I know are supposed to be personal. This is one of those moments.  
He is sitting in his dark candle lit bedroom, surrounded by crushed up Adderall pills, a bottle of tequila and books about Anarchism in a primarily Capitalist Society.  
“What’s going on Ben?” I ask again, projecting my intense worry into the question. I can feel anxiety and suffering in his heart.  
He sighs, pulling his hands back through his shoulder length black hair, his dark eyes glazing over. I can sense him sorting through his thoughts and feelings, trying to find a way to answer my question as honestly as possible.  
Over these months with Ben, I have come to realise how much control he doesn’t have over his own emotions. He feels everything so painfully deep, the good and bad.  
“Nothing, just nothing…” He trails off, leaning down to snort another line of Adderall off the mirror perched on his bedside table. I sigh, wondering if he should be alone right now rather than having me rummage around his brain. Though Ben wasn’t close with his parents, the recent news of his father dying a fortnight ago has flicked a switch in him. The oddly occurring - and mostly humorous – dark and violent thoughts that would flitter across his consciousness have now made themselves at home in the front of his mind. Burying their way into his consciousness. Self-abuse has become his only way to combat these thoughts, and embrace them.  
“I know you’re lying Ben, so don’t even try, I know you better than you do.” I laugh, trying to lighten the mood with a joke. But he just stares at me, through my comments and into my soul, sensing my genuine worry for his well-being. He lies back on his bed, and that’s when I realise, he is shirtless, and covered with his own blood. Again.  
“I am being torn apart… I want to be free of this pain…” He thinks quietly, his eyes filling with tears. I stand up suddenly, throwing my blanket and book down.  
“I am coming over, no ifs, no buts. I’ll see you in a second” I state firmly, hoping the finality of my statement will break our immediate mental connection – it does.  
I toss on some slacks and another baggy sweater - winter at Cambridge University can be a killer. Grabbing the rest of my packet of menthols and a nice bottle of wine, I head out to Ben’s dorm. It is only across the campus, but it feels like forever before I barge into his dorm room. There is no point adhering to personal space limitations now. Turning the corner into his bedroom, I can already hear him crying through the door. I softly knock before opening slowly, not wanting to startle him.  
What I see now is infinitely worse than what I saw through our mental connection. Though it is starting to become a routine to clean up Ben during his episodes, it never gets easier. He is lying on his bed, curled up into a ball, weeping softly. All muscles and sweat. Beside him is a rag covered in blood, a mirror shrouded in drugs, and an ash tray full of butts. His black corduroy pants that he has been wearing most of this recent winter have begun to hang off of his slimming frame awkwardly, and the dark circles around his eyes have now permanently etched themselves into his otherwise flawless pale face.  
“Alright Ben let’s get you cleaned up” I say aloud, placing down the wine on his bedside table and putting my long black hair into a messy bun.  
I sit lightly beside him, and place my hand on his bare back, lightly rubbing his spine. He stops crying, but he is still shaking viciously.  
“Come on Ben, sit up” I coax, placing my hands on his muscly shoulders, trying to pull him up. He shakes me off violently.  
“Ben…” I try one more time, but this time he slaps my hands off his shoulders, before forcefully standing up and throwing his bottle of tequila he was cradling at the wall, smashing it.  
‘Why wont anyone leave me alone!? Can’t they see that I want to be left alone? My Mother and Father saw that, and fucking left me! It was for the better, they knew I was insane! They knew I was fucked up!” Ben begins to rant, punching the wall closest to him, putting his fist clear through the plaster - once again. I do not flinch however, having endured many of these outbursts. I just let him rant.  
“Not even Uncle could handle this bullshit!” He spits, throwing his hands up, tears forming in his pained eyes.  
“But look at me now! At least I am at fucking school! At least I am fucking alive! At least my Father is fucking dead!” He finishes, throwing the contents of his chest of drawers onto the floor, upending one of the open drawers.  
“Fuck!!” He shrieks one more time before kneeling on the ground, his head in his hands. I wait a few more seconds, just to be sure he is done before inspecting the damage he has left on himself. The self-inflicted cuts on his upper arms are a few hours old at least and most have started to clot, however a few opened up in the recent outburst. The split and bruised knuckles are just another set of injuries added to his right hand, with wall punching becoming a weekly occurrence as of late. All in all, physically he will be ok.  
I leave to find a towel in his bathroom I can use to clean up the rest of the blood, searching quietly through his drawers. Drugs, drugs, and more prescription drugs. I find razor blades, anti-nausea pills and no-doz. Finally, behind all of that is a clean towel. I return and find Ben in the same position on the floor, watching me with cautious eyes. I gently probe his mind with mind to see what he is thinking.  
I see myself in his eyes, my blue eyes filled with worry, my black hair a mess around my head, and my baggy clothes hanging off me while I pass him the bottle of red wine and menthols I bought over.  
“God, I don’t know why she won’t leave me… I’d leave me… I’m just a burden” I hear him whisper to himself internally. I do not respond; I just start the task of cleaning the blood off his arms and hands.

“One day I’ll cause an injury that will truly be fun for her to clean up” he thinks darkly, picturing kitchen knives and lighters.  
I flinch at the morbidity of the thought but continue my work. Ben lights up a cigarette as he opens the bottle of wine.  
“Why do you help me?” He asks aloud, sipping from the bottle as I inspect a particularly deep cut on his left bicep.  
“Because I love you” I answer honestly, shrugging.  
Ben shakes his head, inhaling deeply on the cigarette.  
“You wouldn’t if you knew the things I had done” He answers nonchalantly  
I laugh at the statement, sitting back to sit knees to knees with him, throwing the towel on the floor.  
“I spend 50% of my life with you in you’re head Ben, if I was going to run, I would have run by now” I say, laughing again.  
Ben’s face instantly darkens at my statement and I halt laughing immediately. I can feel an intense strain on our mental bond, like he is trying incredibly hard for a thought to not enter my consciousness. I sense him hiding something.  
I shuffle back a little bit, crossing my legs.  
“What do you mean Ben?” I ask quietly. Even though we have been with each other every day for months, I still feel like I barely know him.  
He just sips the wine and takes another drag, looking everywhere around the room except for me. Inspecting my cleaning job on his arm he mutters “I don’t want to talk about it.”  
I sigh, frustrated. I have – mostly unintentionally – let Ben in on nearly everything that has happened in my life, the good and the bad. Yet he cannot answer this simple question? His eyes flitter angrily to me at the sound of my sigh.  
“Don’t. Sigh at me! I do not have to tell you ANYTHING. I did not ask to be connected like this” He snaps at me, pulling a new cigarette out of the packet, it is only then that I realise he butt the previous one on his ankle while barking at me.  
“BEN” I say in shock, inspecting the damage, it’s a simple burn. “What the fuck Ben?” I cannot hide my shock and distaste. I am right here with him for fucks sake.  
Ben smirks at my disgust, inhaling deeply on the new cigarette.  
“If you don’t like it, leave” he says, standing up and sitting back on his bed, cleaning the debris off onto the floor.  
I sit on the floor for a moment longer and decide that there is no way I can leave him alone in this state, whether he will tell me what is going on or not.  
“I will find out what you’re hiding from me” I project into our mental connection. Ben hears but does not respond, he simply lies down and moves a pillow over, so I have somewhere to rest my head. I lie next to him and grab his hand, lying them on his stomach.  
“We shall see” He answers aloud, before dropping his cigarette into an empty bottle and letting sleep take him. I lie my head on his chest and close my eyes, letting Ben's rhythmic breathes lull me to sleep.


	2. Now you Know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dreams are reflections of the pain inside... And Ben's dreams have a lot of pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is crazy that people have already read Chapter 1, only a few hours after I published it... It inspired to me write more, I have been sitting on this fic for at least 6 months now.  
> Please, comment or kudo's or just tell me how shit it is, I love any form of response to my writing.

When I open my eyes, I am looking directly at Ben who is turned away from me, facing his at his father. There is undeniable tension in his shoulders, like he is poised for attack.  
We are in Ben’s family home; I recognise it from fleeting images that sometimes pass his consciousness. Not always good images. I realise quickly that we are in a dream, Ben’s dream. Which explains why the air around both Ben and his father is red, and why the hands on a clock on the wall have stopped moving.  
“Come home Ben.” His dad pleads, stepping closer to Ben.  
Ben’s shoulders shudder, he is crying.  
“This isn’t home.” Ben stutters, raising his right hand to his dad slowly. It is holding a knife, a very sharp knife. It has a white handle with gold filigree. It is the knife that he has been recently using to hurt himself.  
“Ben don’t!” I yell, trying to move forward to get his attention, but I cannot move, and he cannot hear me. I am suspended in time, watching this scene in front of me play out.  
“Come home from that stupid school son, stay with us, your mother misses you, I miss you,” his dad continues, ignoring the knife his son is wielding against him.  
“Miss me?!” Ben scoffs, “what, you miss beating me Han? Telling me how I am a waste of space? How I can be better than anything I want to do? How being a thief is the only thing I will ever amount to? Just like you!” he spits, taking another step closer to his father.  
It occurs to me, somewhere in this dream-ridden haze, that this is more than a dream created by Ben’s tortured psyche, this a memory. This must have been the last time that Ben saw his father before he died, judging by the length of Ben’s hair. It then hit me, that I never asked how his father died. Surely this isn’t it….  
“The Knights miss you Ben, we have not been able to pull off as many big jobs without you… Studying isn’t for you, you have never been the brains, you’re the brawn we need to finish these heists. We need someone who can kill as well as you do. Who can hurt as well as you. Give it up. This life of calm and study. What are you going to be? A professor? With a house and a girl? Will you ever find someone who loves you like us? Who understands like us? Who can accept what you have done? I don’t think so Ben, come home to us.” Ben’s father continues to beg arrogantly, again ignoring his sons brash comments.  
Before Han has time to react, Ben is on to him. He pushes him to the ground, punching him square in the face, dropping the knife. Straddling Hans chest, Ben continues to punch him until they are both covered in blood.  
“I. Am. More. Than. A. Thief!” He yells between punches. Han just laughs at him.  
“Sure son” he manages to spit out, blood pouring from his nose.  
Ben snatches up the knife currently abandoned on the floor next to him and pushes it into his father’s neck.  
“Are you ever going to leave me alone?” Ben demands, voice full of desperation and pain.  
Han just laughs again loudly, and leans up to whisper in Ben’s ear.  
“Never.”  
With that, Ben sighs and removes the knife from his father’s neck.  
I try again to step forward, to grab the knife from Ben’s bloody hand, to clean him up and hold him close. But I cannot move. I cannot move to stop him from what he does next.  
With another angry sigh, Ben sharply plunges the knife directly into his fathers chest, through his ribs and straight into his lungs.  
Han grabs hold of Ben’s arm and smiles, blood pouring from his mouth.  
“There… There is the Ben I know… The Kylo I know…” His smile widens as the breath from his lungs fade away, and his eyes close.  
Ben pushes himself off the body quickly, throwing the knife down. He lifts up his bloody hands and stares at them as his breathing increases. He is having a panic attack. I try again to get to him, to grab his attention, growing increasingly frustrated. I just want to help him.  
Ben falls to the ground, crying hysterically.  
“Fuck… fuck… fuck… fuck… fuck…” He mumbles over an over again, staring at the ground, his shoulders heaving.  
“FUCK!”

***

Both Ben and I sit upright in his bed. It is dark, the sun has gone down and the candles surrounding the bed have long burnt out. Ben next to me is breathing heavy, his hands in his hair.  
“Hey… Hey you’re ok…” I comfort, lightly holding his face, trying to ground him, to get him out of his head, and out of the memories that haunt him.  
“Ben, you’re ok, I am here” I continue, trying to get him to look up so I can look in his eyes. When he does look up, there are tears streaming down his face.  
“Did… Were you there?” He asks through heavy breaths.  
I nod slowly, thankful he bought it up before I had to.  
“You… Did you see what I did? What I am?” He continues, another round of tears falling down his cheeks.  
I nod again, not wanting to say anything wrong.  
Ben shakes his head and looks down at his hands, at the bloody mess that is his knuckles. Flexing them so hard they open up again, but he does not flinch at the pain. He remains perfectly still.  
After what feels like a lifetime of listening to him calm his breathing, Ben looks up at me with red rimmed eyes.  
“Now you know, you know what I am” He whispers painfully, a dark chuckle bursting from him.  
I nod, still holding on to his face “yeah…. I do.”


	3. Brick Walls, Barbed Wire, Ice.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is time for the walls to come down...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are still building up to something so my apologies if it is a bit dull... We are building up to something, I promise. Please let me know what you think, as a Capricorn and an INTP, I need feedback!!

I take my regular seat at the back of the lecture hall, watching closely as Ben stalks in seconds before the lecture starts to take HIS regular seat right at the front. I had woken up alone this morning in his bed surrounded by the mess of yesterday, and a painful headache – which I later realised was Ben’s headache seeping into my consciousness. 

As the lecturer begins to teach us about the innate feminism in renaissance art, I settle in and cast my mind closer to Ben’s. I feel a resistance from me which weakly backs off when he realises that I wasn’t going to give up on talking to him. 

“Where did you go this morning?” I ask quietly, looking directly at the back of Ben’s head. 

He doesn’t answer me. 

I try again “Ben…” I whisper, forcing as much worry and stress into that one word as possible.

Ben sits upright quickly, stunning the person next to him, who shifts slightly away from the large man.  
“What? What do you want? Why are you still talking to me, you saw what I did” He sneers internally, while pulling his hands through his knotted black hair. 

I do not flinch at his tone, used to his outbursts of anger. 

“Because I am sure there is a reason that you did… That” I say, unable to internally vocalise what it was he actually did. Though I do not feel any negative emotion towards Ben now that I know how his Dad died, and how Ben used to live – a thief and a murderer, it still feels weird to look at those hands of his and see them covered in blood. 

Ben laughs aloud, causing the already tense person sitting next to him to quickly move spots in the lecture hall. 

“You know nothing about me.” He snaps, slouching back in his chair. I can tell he is glaring off into the distance, not paying attention to anything our Professor has to say. In saying that, neither am I. I am really going to have to pick up my game when it comes to studying this subject I swear. 

“Then tell me” I say with finality, before shutting off my mind completely and paying attention to the lecture slides in front of me. 

At the end of the seemingly never ending 2 hour lecture, I slowly pack up my things into my backpack, and watch as Ben hauls himself out of the seat, throwing his tattered text book into his shoulder bag. I follow behind him, a few paces back, as we exit the old theatre building, cross the grounds, through a field and to a slow running river around the back of campus. It is secluded normally, but on this chilly afternoon, it is even more quiet, nothing but the sound of water hitting the mossy rocks, and light rustle of the breeze through the evergreen trees surrounding us. 

Ben comes to a stop at the bank of the river and drops his bag onto the grass before sitting on a rock by the waters edge, facing me. He looks even worse than yesterday. His eyes have no life, they’re cold and exhausted, his normally pale face is even more pale, flawless, but translucent. His unkept hair is hanging just in front of his eyes as he stares up at me.  
I take my windbreaker out of my bag, laying it on the cold ground in front of him before perching myself on top of it, placing my bag in my lap. 

Ben turns away, rummaging in his bag for a pack of cigarettes, and pulls out a crumpled box.  
He offers me one, I accept, pulling a lighter out of the pocket of my heavy coat I am wearing to protect myself from the dreary weather. We both light up at the same time, I never take my eyes off him. He inhales deeply, and exhales. Inhales, exhales, inhales, exhales. It is minutes before he looks at me, and speaks.

“I suppose I owe you an explanation” He says clearly,  
I shrug, inhaling in my cigarette held between freezing fingers.

“You don’t owe ME anything… But, you’re obviously not dealing… I am here for you Ben, whether you like it or not. I will always be here for you, and I will not judge you for the things you have done… As I said, I am sure there was a reason for it?” I ramble, realising halfway through my speech that I really don’t know much about where Ben has actually come from. I know everything from his favourite breakfast cereals, what time he wakes up in the morning, which shirts he wears for which day of the week and where he like to place his pillow when he sleeps, but where is his mother? Where did he grow up before coming here? Why is he here?

Ben, hearing the questions I am asking myself, and subconsciously, him, sighs.

“I know, I have not been forthcoming… I feel that too, I know everything at nothing about you...”

I lean back on my arms and look up to the sky, relishing in the small amount of sun shining through the unrelenting clouds. 

“Ok… We should just ask everything we have every wondered… Nothing is off limits. I mean, how can it be these days anyway, I see nearly EVERYTHING you do Ben.” I say quickly before smirking, wondering if he will understand my inuendo. 

Ben takes another drag before halting quickly.  
“Wait? Everything?” He asks, his cheeks going a little bit red. It is nice to see some colour, some human reactions on his otherwise dead face.

I smirk some more, showing him an image in my head of him crying whilst watching Mama Mia 2, him laughing while watching stupid vines alone in bed on his phone, him pulling out a magazine called “Big Tiddie Goth Chicks” out of his pillowcase… I suddenly pause these thoughts, not wanting to show anymore, for his sake and my own. 

Ben’s face is even more red, but a smile is creeping around his mouth, before a full-blown smile replaces his signature frown. 

“ANYWAY” I continue “Let’s do it, a big ol’ deep and meaningful, this is obviously something that is needed, and I don’t have any more classes today so…” I say, leaning my back against a rock behind me, and pulling a muesli bar out of my bag, looking at Ben expectantly.

Ben nods slowly, butting his cigarette against the rock he is sitting on.  
“Ok…” He starts slowly, leaning back on his hands, looking towards the tops of the trees.  
“Um… What about your family though? I mean, you know about my Dad… and my Mum uh…” Ben doesn’t elaborate, he has never spoken directly about his mother, but I feel that will come in time.  
I don’t normally talk about my family. Ever. They rarely enter my consciousness, and when they do, I ensure Ben NEVER catches a glimpse. I do not want to ever see them in his mind by accident. But I did promise him I would be open and honest…  
Ben can sense my trepidation, but waits patiently, observing what I am wearing today to keep himself distracted. Thick black stockings, an oversized brown sweater and matching brown Doc Martens, my long black hair pulled back into a high ponytail.  
I hear him wondering about where I got my brown shoes from when I begin to answer his question.

“I don’t have parents” I say, hoping that will be enough to end the conversation, but I know it will not be.  
“You don’t?” Ben presses, wanting more from me.

I get a sudden flash from behind my eyes, a vision of me sitting on my grandparent’s doorstep, watching as a car drives away, with the people inside not even taking a second glance at their 6-year-old child alone. 

Ben saw that.  
“Oh” is all he says.  
We sit in comfortable silence for a moment before curiosity gets the better of him.  
“Why’d they leave you?” Ben asks, as tactless as always. I flinch internally, after years of convincing myself it wasn’t ME they were leaving, it is still sometimes hard to hear those words. 

I cough to cover up how uncomfortable I am, and the shakiness in my voice. “They were massive in the crime syndicate both in the UK and the USA. I guess having a child gets in the way of that? So, they eventually got sick of having me around I suppose, affecting sales and jobs and all that, so they sent me to live with my grandparents… Which probably turned out to be the best thing for me. They are loving, caring, intelligent, clean, elegant, well read, well-travelled... They love me for me.” 

I look up, realising I had been playing with my shoe-lace the whole time I had been talking. There is no reaction in Ben’s face, nor in his mind. He is just looking at me, waiting for me to go on. What else could he want to hear?

“Do you still talk to them?” I hear in my mind. Sometimes I think it is easier for both Ben and I to interact with each other non-vocally. I, because I have always been better at expressing myself through art and pictures, and Ben because he has never been good at expressing himself at all. 

I shake my head slowly, actively showing him images of me spending days, weeks and months of searching for my parents. Emails, letters, online searches, days spent in libraries, months spent on the phone. Nothing. I don’t know what I was expecting to find, it is not like I wanted to have contact with them. Maybe it was to see if they were still alive? Maybe the drugs had killed them. Maybe it was to show them how well I was doing without them, I had been accepted to no less than 7 different universities around the world, I had grown up – reasonably – secure within myself and within my community. I had travelled the world with my grandparents, had seen sites they could only DREAM of in their drug and crime induced haze they forced themselves into. 

I search Ben’s mind for a response to what I had told him, that I am a child of crime. An orphan essentially. But all he does is show pictures and memories in response. 

I close my eyes and watch. Ben, as a young teen in a dirty drug den. I had been to enough as a young girl to know them when I see them. Mattresses everywhere, people asleep, nodding off, talking to themselves. The memory then focusses in on Ben and his father. His father is selling. Giving baggies to anyone, anyone who has money to offer. He is also selling guns, knives and any other illegal paraphernalia he can get rid of it seems. Ben is sitting next to his father on the floor, playing with his own little knife. I instantly recognise it as the white and gold adorned knife that Ben still has to this day. He has it placed against his bare shin, twisting it slowly, putting the tiniest amount of pressure on it as it lightly digs into his skin. But that’s enough to break the skin, and a little drop of blood slides down his leg, onto the dirty floorboards he sits on. Ben does it again, watching, fascinated with what he is able to do.  
His father doesn’t even notice his young teenage son, sitting on the floor at his feet, causing intentional harm to himself. 

“That was the first time I did it y’know?” I hear, breaking me from the scene behind my eyelids.  
I open my eyes and see that Ben has changed his position, he is now lounging across the rock, his hair almost touching the wet dirt belong him. He has a string of grass in his hands that he is shredding, while he mentally focusses on showing me these memories. 

“Hurt yourself?” I answer out loud.  
Ben does not answer, he just refocusses on showing me these memories.

I close my eyes and I am back in the dirty drug den, observing the young Ben playing with his knife, watching his father sell drugs.  
His dad looks down at Ben, not noticing – or not caring – about the blood now trickling down his sons’ leg.  
“You bored?” He asks sharply, like he is bothered by the fact that Ben is even there.  
Ben shrugs nonchalantly, nodding.  
Han then sorts through the myriad of baggies on his table and smiles when he seems to find the one he wants.  
He passes a little drug bag to Ben, it has a very white powder in it, filling about a half of the bag.  
“There you go son, that oughta entertain you” he laughs before turning his attention to a young girl, no older than 16 asking if he stocks Smack. 

I open my eyes, pulling myself once again from the memory, Ben is still lying over the rock, the blade of grass now disintegrated.

“So… what was in the bag?” I blurt out, out of morbid curiosity.  
Ben laughs darkly.  
“Cocaine. Pure cocaine. My first bump of cocaine was off a knife I had been using to dig into my leg, in a drug den, because my father was sick of me fidgeting out of boredom while he was selling… I was 13”.

“What the fuck…” I mutter, angry at Han for doing this. For abandoning his son. For causing damage on this gorgeous and intelligent human in front of me.  
Ben mistakes me anger for disgust, and his face takes the form of emotionless stone.

“It’s fine, whatever. It was the past. I am different now, he is dead.” Ben snaps, pushing me away internally too.  
“Ben… I am not judging you, we discussed this. No. Judgment.” I reassure him, mentally pushing against the barrier he has created in his head. I feel nothing, nothing but brick walls, barbed wire, complete cold. 

We sit in silence, as I wait for the ice surrounding his consciousness to melt, so we can continue this conversation. I think we need it.


End file.
